Posts
Illustration: It speaks for itself, but perhaps a bit of background in needed. Gonzales performed, albeit poorly, before congress. Bush did not watch it, but he did say he was happy with the performance and that he now has more support than ever. I guess that is as good a reason as anyone else gave.
What is happening? Well, Bush wants to continue in Iraq, increase in Iraq, more “boots on the ground” for the surge. He wants to keep Cheney and Rove and Rice near him. So, events provided a bit of good luck for him. The Virginia Tech Massacre kept attention from Iraq and dulled the focus on Gonzo. That means he can keep Gonzo there as a punching bag for frightened Republicans and continue as usual. There is, after all, a bill introduced by our Kucinich to impeach Cheney and Rowe is being made a fool of by Cheryl Crow. Their futures look grim indeed. Furthermore, noted U.S. intellects such as David Letterman simply have to play tapes of Bush in action to get big laughs.
However, if Gonzo goes, the the will have to be on Cheney, and Cheney is bright enough to know this. The illustration show him after he saw Gonzo’s performance and expecting he would be next. Scooter Libby, anyone?
Finally, as I understand it, the funding bill for Iraq contains only a non-binding stipulation that the troops be withdrawn. Bush still will veto it. After all, public provides, he decides.
I was only able to obtain part two of this outstanding interview, but then I noticed it complete on Znet and hasten to get it to you. It took place on “Patriots Day,” and it was appropriate that actual patriots in the Jeffersonian sense appeared on this program, which now is broadcast on over 500 radio and television stations as well as Link TV and Free Speech TV. In it, there is a good definition of patriotism.
*ZNet | Activism*
*In Rare Joint Interview, Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn on Iraq,
Vietnam, Activism and History*
*by Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn; Democracy Now!
<http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/04/16/1338223>; April
17, 2007*
*AMY GOODMAN: *Today an hour with Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky
in a rare interview with them together, and I welcome you both
to /Democracy Now!/
*NOAM CHOMSKY: *Nice to be here.
*HOWARD ZINN: *Thanks Amy.
*AMY GOODMAN: *What a day to be here. This is a day of the
Boston Marathon, it is raining. It is a major storm outside and
tens of thousands of people -- were either of you planning to
run today?
*HOWARD ZINN: *Well we were, yes, but you know –
*NOAM CHOMSKY: *But you really made it impossible for us.
*AMY GOODMAN: *I'm sorry about that.
*HOWARD ZINN: *We had a choice of running in the marathon or
having an interview with you, what's more important?
*AMY GOODMAN: *Well, today is Patriot's Day, Howard Zinn, what
does patriotism mean to you?
*HOWARD ZINN: *I'm glad you said what it means to me. Because it
means to me something different than it means to a lot of people
I think who have distorted the idea of patriotism. Patriotism to
me means doing what you think you're country should be doing.
Patriotism means supporting your government when you think it's
doing right, opposing your government when you think it's doing
wrong. Patriotism to me means really what the /Declaration of
Independence/ suggests. And that is that government is an
artificial entity.
Government is set up--and here's what a /Declaration of
Independence/ is about, government is set up by the people in
order to fulfill certain responsibilities: equality, life,
liberty, the pursuit of happiness. And according to the
/Declaration of Independence/ when the government violates those
responsibilities, then, and these are the words of the
/Declaration of Independence/ it is the right of the people to
alter or abolish the government.
In other’s words the government is not holy, the government is
not to be obeyed when the government is wrong. So to me
patriotism in its best sense means thinking about the people in
the country, the principals for which the country stands for,
and it requires opposing the government when the government
violates those principles.
So today, for instance, the highest act of patriotism I suggest,
would be opposing the war in Iraq and calling for a withdrawal
of troops from Iraq. Simply because everything about the war
violates the fundamental principles of equality, life, liberty,
the pursuit of happiness, not just for Americans, but for people
in another part of the world. So, yes, patriotism today requires
citizens to be active on many, many different fronts to oppose
government policies on the war, government policies which have
taken trillions of dollars from this country's treasury and used
it for war and militarism. That's what patriotism would require
today.
*AMY GOODMAN: *Noam Chomsky, the headlines today, just this
weekend, one of the bloodiest months in Iraq, the number of
prisoners in U.S. Jails in Iraq has reached something like
18,000. Who knows if that's not an underestimate? An /Associated
Press/ photographer remains in jail imprisoned by U.S.
authorities without charge for more than a year. The health
ministry has found 70% of Baghdad school children showing
symptoms of trauma-related stress. Your assessment now of the
situation there?
*NOAM CHOMSKY: *This is one of the worst catastrophes in
military history and also in political history. The most recent
studies of the /Red Cross/ show that Iraq has suffered the worst
decline in child mortality, infant mortality, an increase in
infant mortality known. But it’s since 1990. That is, it's a
combination of the affect of the murderers' and brutal sanctions
regime, which we don’t talk much about, which devastated society
through the 1990's and strengthened Saddam Hussein, compelled
the population to rely on him for survival, which probably saved
him from the fate of a whole long series of other tyrants who
were overthrown by their own people supported by the U.S.
And then came the war on top of it which has simply increased
the horrors. The decline is unprecedented. The increase in
infant mortality is unprecedented; it's now below the level of,
worse than some of the countries in sub-Saharan Africa. It's one
index of what's happened. The most probably measure of deaths in
a study sponsored by M.I.T. incidentally carried out by leading
specialists in Iraq and here last October was about 650,000
killed, soon to be pushing a million. There are several million
people fled including the large part of the professional
classes, people who could in principal help rebuild the country.
And without going on, it's a hideous catastrophe and getting worse.
It’s also worth stressing that aggressors do not have any
rights. This is a clear-cut case of aggression and violation of
the U.N. Charter, a supreme international crime and in the words
of the Nuremburg Tribunal, aggressors simply have no rights to
make any decisions. They have responsibilities. The
responsibilities are, first of all to pay enormous reparations
and that includes for the sanctions-- the effect of the
sanctions, in fact it ought to include the support for Saddam
Hussein in the 1980's, which was torture for Iraqis and worse
for Iranians.
The paid reparations hold those responsible, accountable and
attend to the will of the victims. It doesn't necessarily mean
follow blindly, but certainly attend to it. And the will of the
victims is known, the regular U.S.-run polls in Iraq, and the
government polling institutions, it's just an overwhelming
support for either immediate or quick withdrawal of U.S. Troops,
about 80 percent think that the presence of U.S. Troops
increases the level of violence. Over 60% think that troops are
legitimate targets. This isn’t for all of Iraq, if you take the
figures of Arab Iraq where the troops are actually deployed the
figures are higher. The figures keep going up. They're
unmentioned, virtually unreported, scarcely alluded to in the
Baker-Hamilton critical report. That’ll be our primary concern,
along with the concerns of the Americans.
*AMY GOODMAN: *Vice president Cheney is saying this war can be won.
*NOAM CHOMSKY: *There's an interesting study being done right
now by a former Russian soldier in Afghanistan in the late
1980's, he's now a student in Toronto who's comparing the
Russian press and the Russian political figures and military
leaders, what they were saying about Afghanistan, comparing it
with what Cheney, others and the press are saying about Iraq and
not to your great surprise, change a few names and it comes out
about the same.
They were also saying the war in Afghanistan could be won and
they were right. If they had increased the level of violence
sufficiently, they could have won the war in Ira—in Afghanistan.
They're also pointing out -- of course they describe correctly
the heroism of the Russian troops, the efforts to bring
assistance to the poor people of Afghanistan, to protect them
from U.S.-run Islamic fundamentalist terrorist forces, the
dedication, the rights they have won for the people in
Afghanistan, and the warning that if they pull out it will be
total disaster, mayhem, they must stay and win.
Unfortunately they were right about that too, when they did pull
out, it was a total disaster. The U.S.-backed forces tore the
place to shreds, so terrible that the people even welcomed the
Taliban when they came in. So yes, those arguments can always be
given. The Germans could have argued if they had the force that
they didn’t, that they could have won the Second World War. I
mean the question is not can you win. The question is should you
be there.
*AMY GOODMAN: *You say and talk about Afghanistan, sure the
Russians could have won if they had--could have tolerated the
level of violence. What are you saying about Iraq? Do you feel
the same way?
*NOAM CHOMSKY: *It depends on what you mean by win. The United
States certainly has the capacity to wipe the country out. If
that's winning, yeah, you can win. It's -- in terms of the goals
that the united states attempted to achieve, the U.S.
Government, not the -- the United States, to install a client
regime, which would be obedient to the United States, which
would permit military bases, which would allow U.S. and British
corporations to control the energy resources and so on, in terms
of achieving that goal, I don't know if they can achieve that.
But that they could destroy the country, that's beyond question.
*AMY GOODMAN: *We're talking to Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn, on
this Patriot’s Day that is celebrated in Massachusetts. We're in
Boston, Massachusetts and we'll be back with them in a min.
*AMY GOODMAN: *As we continue today, talking about the state of
the world with two of the leading dissidents here in this
country, Howard Zinn, legendary historian, author of many books,
/The People's History of the United States/ as well as, his
latest is /A Power Governments Cannot Suppress/. We're also
joined by Noam Chomsky, linguist at Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, his latest book is /Failed States: The Abuse of
Power and the Assault on Democracy/. Howard, you went to North
Vietnam, can you talk about how the Vietnam War ended, and also
your experience there, why you went?
*HOWARD ZINN: *Well, I went to North Vietnam in early 1968 with
Father Daniel Berrigan and the two of us went actually at the
request of the North Vietnamese government who were going to
release the first three airmen prisoners, American fliers who
were in prison in North Vietnam and the North Vietnamese wanted
to release them on the Tet holiday, also the Tet Offensive, sort
of as a gesture, I suppose as a good will gesture and they asked
for representatives of the American peace movement so Daniel
Berrigan and I went to Hanoi for that reason.
And of course it was an educational experience for us. Noam was
talking about in response to your question about victory and
winning. And the question is, of course, why should we win if
winning means destroying a country? And there's still people who
say, oh, we could have won the Vietnam war, as if the question
was, you know, can we win or can we lose, instead of what are we
doing to these people.
And, yes, Noam said, yes, we could win in Iraq by destroying all
of Iraq. The Russians could have won Afghanistan by destroying
all of Afghanistan. We could have won in Vietnam by dropping
nuclear bombs instead of killing two million people in Vietnam,
killing 10 million people in Vietnam. And that would be
considered victory, who would take satisfaction in that?
What we saw in Vietnam is, I think what people are seeing in
Iraq. And that is huge numbers of people dying for no reason at
all. What we saw in Vietnam was the American army being sent
halfway around the world to a country, which was not threatening
us and we were destroying the people in the country. And here in
Iraq, we’re going the other way, we're also going halfway around
the world to do the same thing to them. And our experience in
Iraq contradicted as I think the experiences of people who are
on the ground in Iraq contradicted again and again the
statements of American officials.
The statements of the high military, statements like, oh, we're
only bombing military targets, oh, these are accidents when so
many civilians are killed. And, yes, as Cheney said, victory is
around the corner. What we saw in Vietnam was horrifying. And it
was obviously horrifying even to G.I.'s in Vietnam because they
began to come back from Vietnam and oppose the war and formed
Vietnam Veterans against the war.
We saw villages as far away from any military target as you can
imagine, absolutely destroyed. And children killed and their
graves still fresh by American jet planes coming over in the
middle of the night. When I hear them talk about John McCain as
a hero, I say to myself, oh, yeah, he was a prisoner and
prisoners are maltreated and everywhere and this is terrible.
But John McCain, like the other American fliers, what were they
doing? They were bombing defenseless people. And so, yes Vietnam
is something that by the way, is still not taught very well in
American schools. I spoke to a group of people in an advanced
history class not long ago, 100 kids, asked them how many people
here have heard of the /My Lai Massacre/? No hand was raised. We
are not teaching -- if we were teaching the history of Vietnam
as it should be taught, then the American people from the start
would have opposed the war instead of waiting three or four
years for a majority of the American people to declare their
opposition to the war.
*AMY GOODMAN: *Noam Chomsky, you went to Cambodia after the
bombing.
*NOAM CHOMSKY: *I went to Laos and North Vietnam.
*AMY GOODMAN: *When and why?
*NOAM CHOMSKY: *Two years after Howard, early 1970. I spent the
week in Laos. A very moving week, happened to be in Laos right
after the C.I.A. mercenary army had cleared out about 30,000
people from the Plain of Jarres area in Northern Laos, where
they had been subjected to what was then the most fierce bombing
in human history, it was exceeded shortly after by Cambodia.
These are poor peasant society, probably most of them didn't
even know they were in Laos. There was nothing there. The planes
were sent there because the bombing of North Vietnam had been
temporarily stopped and there was nothing for the air force to
do so they bombed Laos. They had been living in caves for over
two years trying to farm at night. They had finally been driven
out by the mercenary army to the surroundings of Vientien.
And I spent a lot of time interviewing refugees with Fred
Branfman who did heroic work in bringing this story finally to
the American people. And so more interesting things in Laos.
Then I went to North Vietnam also where Howard had been, invited
by the government, but I was actually invited to teach. It was a
bombing pause, a short bombing pause and they were able to bring
people in from outlying areas back to Hanoi and the Polytechnic
University of what was left of it, the ruins of the Polytechnic
University and I came and lectured on just about anything that I
knew anything about-- these are people who had been out of touch
with the faculty, students, others who had been out of touch
with the world for five years and they asked me everything from
what's Norman Mailer writing these days, to technical questions
and linguistics and mathematics whatever else I could say
anything about.
I also traveled around a little bit, not very much, but for a
few days, but enough to see what Howard described, right close
to Hanoi, I never got very far away, which was the most
protected area because in Hanoi there were embassies and
journalists so the bombing of the city was nothing like what it
was much further away. But even there you could see the ruins of
villages, the shell of the major hospital in Thanh Hoa, which
had been bombed by accident of course. Areas that we're -- just
moonscapes, where there had been villages in an effort to
destroy a bridge and so on. So that those were my two weeks in
Laos and North Vietnam.
*AMY GOODMAN: *You were a linguistics professor at M.I.T., at
the time?
*NOAM CHOMSKY: *Yes.
*AMY GOODMAN: *So, why did you go? What drove you to? And, what
was the response here at home?
*NOAM CHOMSKY: *Well, I was able to—and actually I had intended
to go only for one week to North Vietnam. But the -- if you
really want to know the details, the U.N. bureaucrat in Laos who
was organizing flights was a very board Indian bureaucrat who
had nothing to do and apparently his only joy in the world was
making things difficult for people who wanted to do something,
not untypical. And fortunately for me, he made it difficult for
me and my companions, Doug Dowd and Dick Fernandez to go to
North Vietnam. So I had a week in Laos, which was an extremely
valuable week. I wrote about it in some detail. But, I was
teaching at the time, I was to be away, it was a vacation week,
so actually I taught linguistics at the Polytechnic University.
*AMY GOODMAN: *What about the opposition here at home and your
level of protest at MIT? What did you do?
*NOAM CHOMSKY: *Well, M.I.T was a curious situation. I happened
to be working in the laboratory, which was 100%, supported by
the three armed services, but it was also one of the centers of
the anti-war resistance. Starting in 1965 along with an artist
friend in Boston, Harold Tovish, we organized, tried to organize
national tax resistance, this was 1965. Like Howard, I was
giving talks, taking part in demonstrations, getting arrested.
By 1966 we were becoming involved directly in support for a
draft resistance, helping deserters and others that just
continued – it’s worth remembering, one often hears today
justified complaints about how little protest there is against
the war in Iraq. But that's very misleading. And here is as
Howard was saying a little sense of history is useful.
The protest against the war in Iraq is far beyond the protest
against Vietnam on any comparable level. Large-scale protest
against the war in Vietnam did not begin until there were
several hundred thousand U.S. troops in South Vietnam, the
country had been virtually destroyed, the bombing had been
extended to the north, to Laos, soon to Cambodia, where
incidentally we have just learned, – or rather we haven't
learned, but we could learn if we had a free press, that the
bombing in Cambodia, which is known to be horrendous, was
actually five times as high as was reported, greater than the
entire allied bombing in all of World War II on a defenseless
peasant society, which turned peasants into enraged fanatics.
During those years the Khmer Rouge grew from nothing, a few
thousand scattered people to hundreds of thousands and that led
to the part of the Cambodia that we're allowed to think about.
But the real protest against the war in Vietnam came at a period
far beyond what has yet been reached in Iraq. First few years of
the war, there was almost nothing. So little protest that
virtually nobody in the United States even knows when the war
began. Kennedy invaded South Vietnam in 1962. That was after
seven years of efforts to impose a Latin-American style terror
state, which had killed tens of thousands of people and elicited
resistance.
In 1962, Kennedy sent the U.S. Air force to start bombing South
Vietnam, under South Vietnamese markings, but nobody was deluded
by that, initiated chemical warfare to destroy crops and ground
cover, and started programs which rounded openly millions of
people into what amounted to concentration camps, called
strategic hamlets where they were surrounded by barbed wire to
protect them as it was said from the guerrillas, who everyone
knew they were voluntarily supporting, an indigenous South
Vietnamese resistance. That was 1962.
You couldn't get two people in a living room to talk about it.
In October 1965, right here in Boston, maybe the most liberal
city in the country, there were then already a couple hundred
thousand troops, bombing North Vietnam had started. We tried to
have our first major public demonstration against the war on the
Boston Common, the usual place for meetings. I was supposed to
be one of the speakers, but nobody could hear a word. The
meeting was totally broken up by students marching over from
universities, by others, and hundreds of state police, which
kept people from being murdered. The next day's newspaper, the
/Boston Globe/, the world newspaper was full of denunciations of
the people who dared make mild statements about bombing the North.
In fact right through the protests, which did reach a
substantial scale and were really significant, especially the
resistance, it was mostly directed against the war in North
Vietnam. The attack on South Vietnam was mostly ignored.
Incidentally the same is true of government planning. We know
about that from the Pentagon Papers and the subsequent
documents, there was meticulous planning about the bombing of
the North. Where should you bomb? And how far should you go? And
so on. Bombing of the South in the internal documents there's
almost nothing. There's a simple reason for it. The bombing of
the south was costless. Nobody's going to shoot you down.
Nobody's going to complain. Do whatever you want. Wipe the place
out. Which is pretty much what happened.
North Vietnam was dangerous. You could hit Russian ships in
harbor. As I said there were embassies in Hanoi where people
could report that you were bombing an internal chinese railroad
that happened to pass through North Vietnam. So there could be
international repercussions and costs, so therefore it was very
carefully calibrated. If you look at say Robert McNamara’s
memoirs, lot of discussion of the bombing of North Vietnam,
virtually nothing about the bombing of the South Vietnam. Which
even in 1965, was triple the scale of the bombing of the North,
and it had been going on for years. Now there is a great deal
more protest.
There actually one interesting illustration, I’ll end with that,
Arthur Schlesinger, best known American historian, in the case
of Vietnam, the early years he supported it. In fact if you read
his /Thousand Days/, story of the Kennedy administration, it’s
barely mentioned except for the wonderful things that's
happening. By 1966, as there was beginning to be concern about
the costs of the war, we were reaching situations rather like a
lead opinion today about Iraq: it's too costly, we might not be
able to win, and so on. Schlesinger wrote, I’m almost quoting,
that we all pray that the hawks will be right in believing that
more troops will allow us to win. And if they are right, we'll
be praising the wisdom and statesman ship of the American
government in winning a war in Vietnam after turning the land --
turning it into a land of ruin and wreck. So we'll be praising
their wisdom and statesmanship, but it probably won't work. You
can translate that into today’s commentaries, which are called
the doves.
On the other hand, greatly to his credit, when the bombing of
Iraq started, Schlesinger took the strongest position of anyone
I’ve seen, of condemnation of it. First stated so strong that it
wasn’t, almost never--didn't appear in the press and I haven't
heard a word about it since. As the line began he said this is a
date, which will live in infamy. And he re-called President
Roosevelt’s words at Pearl Harbor, a date that will live in
infamy because the united states is following the path of the
Japanese fascists, a pretty strong statement. I think that sort
of reflects a difference you see in public attitudes too,
opposition to aggression is far higher than it was in the 60’s.
*AMY GOODMAN: *Howard Zinn, how did Vietnam end, the war end and
what are the parallels that you see today? Do you see parallels
today?
*HOWARD ZINN: *Well, I suppose if you believe that Henry
Kissinger deserved the Nobel Prize, you would think that the war
ended because Henry Kissinger went to Paris and negotiated with
the Vietnamese. But the war ended, I think, because finally
after that slow buildup of protests, I think the war ended
because the protests in the United States reached a crescendo,
which couldn't be ignored. And because the GI's coming home were
turning against the war and because soldiers in the field were
-- well, they were throwing grenades under the officer's tents,
the “Fragging Phenomenon.” There's a book called /Soldiers in
Revolt/ by a man named David Cortright and he details how much
dissidence there was, how much opposition to the war there was
among soldiers in Vietnam and how this was manifested in their
behavior and desertions. A huge number of desertions and
essentially the government of the United States found it
impossible to continue the war. The ROTC chapters were closing
down.
In some ways, it's similar to the situation now where the
government in Iraq, the government is finding, our government is
finding that we don't have enough soldiers to fight the war. So
they're sending them back again and again. And where they're
recruiting sergeants here in the United States, they're going to
enormous lengths, lying to young people about what will await
them and what benefits they will get. The government is
desperate to maintain the military force today in Iraq. And I
think in Vietnam, this dissidence among the military, and its
inability to really carry on the war militarily was a crucial
factor. Of course, along with the fact, we simply could not
defeat the Vietnamese resistance. And resistance movements --
and this is what we are finding out in Iraq today -- resistance
movements against a foreign aggressor, they will get very
desperate, they will not give in. And the resistance movement in
Vietnam would not surrender.
And so, the US government found it obviously impossible to win
without, yes, dropping nuclear bombs, destroying the country and
making it clear to the world that the United States was an
outlaw nation and impossible to hold the support of the people
at home. And so, yes, we finally did what a number of us had
been asking for many, many years to withdraw from Vietnam and
the same arguments were made at that time. That is, when we
called in 1967, well, I wrote a book in 1967 called, /Vietnam,
the Logic of Withdrawal/ and the reaction to that was, you know,
we can't withdraw. It will be terrible if we withdraw. There
will be civil war if we withdraw. There will be a bloodbath if
we withdraw. And so we didn't withdraw and the war went on for
another six years, another eight years, six years for the
Americans to withdraw, eight years totally. The war went on and
on and another 20,000 Americans were killed. Another million
Vietnamese were killed.
And when we finally withdrew, there was no bloodbath. I mean it
wasn’t that everything was fine when we withdrew and there were
re-education camps set up, and the Chinese people were driven
out of Hanoi on boats, so it wasn’t -- . But the point is, that
there was no bloodbath, the bloodbath was what we were doing in
Vietnam. Just as today when they say, oh, there will be civil
war, there will be chaos if we withdraw from Iraq. There is
civil war, there is chaos and no one is pointing out what we
have done to Iraq. Two million people driven from their homes
and children in dire straits, no waters, no food. And so the
remembrance of Vietnam is important if we are going to make it
clear that we must withdraw from Iraq and find another way, not
for the United States, for some international group, preferably
a group composed mostly of representatives of Arab nations to
come into Iraq and help mediate whatever strife there is among
the various fractions in Iraq. But certainly the absolute
necessary first step in Iraq now is what we should have done in
Vietnam in 1967 and that is simply get out as fast as ships and
planes can carry us out.
*AMY GOODMAN: *This is /Democracy Now!/ democracynow.org, the
war and peace report. I'm Amy Goodman. My guests here in Boston,
as we broadcast from Massachusetts on this Patriot's Day, are
Noam Chomsky. Noam Chomsky, a professor of linguistics of the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Howard Zinn, a
legendary historian, taught at Spellman for years until he was
forced out because he took the side of the young women students
and then went to Boston University and only recently, in the
last few years, was given -- what --given an honorary degree by
Spellman?
*HOWARD ZINN: *Yes.
*AMY GOODMAN: *Did you feel vindicated?
*HOWARD ZINN: *I always feel vindicated.
*AMY GOODMAN: *Noam Chomsky, what did you think of Nancy Pelosi,
House speaker, third in line in succession for the presidency
after Dick Cheney, going to Syria together with the first Muslim
congress member in the United States, Keith Ellison from
Minneapolis?
*NOAM CHOMSKY: *The only thing wrong with it, it was that it was
the third person in line. I mean, if the United States
government were sincerely interested in bringing about some
measure of peace, prosperity, stability in the region instead of
dominating it by force, now they would of course be dealing with
Syria and with Iran. Pretty much the way the Baker-Hamilton
report proposed except beyond what they proposed because they
proposed, they should be dealing with it in matters concerning
with Iraq. But there are regional issues. In the case of Syria,
there are issues related to Syria itself, but also to Lebanon
and to Israel. Israel is in control of, in fact has annexed in
violation of Security Council orders, has annexed a large part
of Syrian territory, the Golan Heights. Syria is making it very
clear that they are interested in a peace settlement with
Israel, which would involve, as it should, the withdrawal of the
Israeli troops from occupied territories.
*AMY GOODMAN: *Are there secret negotiations going on between
Israel and Syria now?
*NOAM CHOMSKY: *You never know what's going on in secret. But so
far Israel has been flatly refusing any negotiations. In fact,
the only debate that's going on now is whether it's the United
States that's pressuring Israel or Israel is pressuring the
United States to prevent negotiations on the Golan Heights and
in fact on the occupied territories all together. This is called
a very contentious issue, Israel-Palestine, which is kind of
surprising. It's a contentious issue only in the United States,
and even not among the American population. It's a contentious
issue because the US government and the Israeli government are
blocking a very broad international consensus, which has almost
universal support, even the majority of Americans and which has
been on the table for about 30 years, blocked by the US and
Israel. And everyone knows who's involved in this, what the
general framework for a settlement is.
It was put on the --it was brought to the Security Council in
1976, by the Arab states, Jordan, Syria and Egypt, the so-called
confrontation states and the other Arab states. They proposed a
two-state settlement on the internationally recognized border, a
settlement, which included the wording of UN-242, the first
major resolution, recognition of the right of each state in the
region to exist in peace and security within secure and
recognized boundaries, that would include Israel and a
Palestinian state. It was vetoed by the United States and a
similar resolution vetoed in 1980.
I won't run through the whole history, but throughout this whole
history, with temporary and rare exceptions, there is a couple
here and here, the US has simply blocked the settlement and
still does and Israel rejects it. Sometimes it's dramatic. In
1988, the Palestinian National Council, their governing body,
formally accepted a two-state settlement. They tacitly accepted
it before. There was a reaction from Israel immediately; it was
a coalition government, Shimon Perez, Yitzhak Shamir. Their
reaction was, quoting, that “there cannot be an additional
Palestinian state between Jordan and Israel.” An additional
implying that Jordan already is a Palestinian state. So there
can't be another one and the fate of the territories will be
settled according to the guidelines of the state of Israel.
Shortly after that, the Bush number one administration totally
endorsed that proposal -- that was the Baker plan, James Baker
plan of December 1989 -- fully endorsed that proposal, extreme
rejectionism.
And so it continues with rare exceptions, just moving to today,
the Arab league proposal has been reintroduced, it’s 2002, but
they brought it up again a couple of weeks ago. That goes even
further. It calls for full normalization of relations with
Israel within the framework of the international consensus on a
two-state settlement, which might involve to use official US
terminology from far back, minor and mutual modifications, like
straightening out the border, or in other words in the wrong
place or something. And then there are technicalities to be
resolved, plenty of them.
But that's the basic frame work, supported by the Arab world, by
Europe, by the non-aligned countries, Latin America and others.
It is supported by Iran, it doesn't get reported here. One loves
Ahmadinejad's crazed statements, but do not report the
statements of his superior, Ayatollah Khameni who's in charge of
international affairs -- Ahmadinejad doesn’t have anything to do
with it -- who has declared a couple of times that Iran supports
the Arab league position. Hezbollah in Lebanon has made it clear
that they don't like it, they don't believe in recognizing
Israel, but if the Palestinians accept it, they will not disrupt
it, they are a Lebanese organization. And Hamas has said, they
would accept the Arab league consensus. That leaves the United
States and Israel in splendid isolation, even more so than in
the past 30 years in rejecting a political settlement. So it's
contentious in a sense, but not in that there's no way to
resolve it. We know how to resolve it.
*AMY GOODMAN: *Do you think it will change?
*NOAM CHOMSKY: *It depends on people here. If the majority of
the American population, who also accept this decide to do
something about it, yeah, it will change.
*AMY GOODMAN: *Do you think it's changing, for example, with
Carter's book coming out?
*NOAM CHOMSKY: *I think it's one of the signs of change and
there are many others. Or is it just a change mood in the
country, I mean, anybody who's been giving talks about this just
knows it from personal experience. I mean not very long ago, if
I was giving a talk on the Middle East, I mean, even at MIT,
there would be armed police present, or at least undercover
police to prevent violence, disruption, breakup of meetings and
so on. That's a thing of the past. By now it's much easier to
talk about this. Actually, Carter's book is quite interesting.
Carter's book was essentially repeating what is known around the
world.
*AMY GOODMAN: */Palestine//: Peace Not Apartheid/.
*NOAM CHOMSKY: *Yeah. He -- there were a couple of errors in the
book, they were ignored. The only serious error in the book,
which a fact checker should have picked up, is that Carter
accepted a kind of party line on the Israeli invasion of Lebanon
in 1982. Israel invaded Lebanon and killed maybe 15,000-20,000
people and destroyed much of southern Lebanon. They were able to
do it because the Reagan administration vetoed Security Council
resolutions and supported them and so on.
The claim here, you know, you read Thomas Freedman or someone,
is that Israel invaded in response to shelling of the Galilee
from -- by Palestinians, Palestinian terror attacks and Carter
repeats that, it is not true. There was the border, there was a
cease-fire, the Palestinians observed it despite regular Israeli
attempts, something as heavy bombing and others to elicit some
response that would be a pretext to the planned invasion. When
there was no pretext, they invaded anyway. That's the only
serious error in the book, ignored. There are some very valuable
things in the book, also ignored. One of them, perhaps the most
important is that Carter is the first, I think, in the main
stream in the United States to report what was known in
dissident circles and talked about, namely that the famous road
map, which the quartet suggested as steps towards settlement of
the problem, the road map was instantly rejected by Israel.
*AMY GOODMAN: *I'm going to interrupt you here because we're
going to have to end the broadcast. We're going to bring you
folks part two of this conversation in the next few days. But I
want to end with Howard, tonight you'll be in Faneuil Hall in
Boston. Do you have hope right now as a man who has been part of
dissident movements for many years, led them, chronicled them in
these last few minutes of this first part of our discussion?
*HOWARD ZINN: *By the way, you're going to be with me in Faneuil
Hall, tonight. I won’t go without you, yes.
*AMY GOODMAN: *I will be with you tonight at 7 pm in Faneuil
Hall in Boston.
*HOWARD ZINN: *But do I have hope, it that what you are asking?
Well, I do, I think the American people are basically decent and
good people and if they learn the facts and as they are learning
the facts, they become aroused as they did during Vietnam, as
they did in the years of the civil rights movement.
*AMY GOODMAN: *I'm going to leave it there now, but part two
later in the week. Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, thank you very much.
*ZNet | Repression*
*Noam Chomsky Accuses Alan Dershowitz of Launching a "Jihad" to
Block Norman Finkelstein From Getting Tenure at Depaul University*
*by Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn; Democracy Now!
19, 2007*
*AMY GOODMAN: *We turn now to the second part of our
conversation with Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn, two of the
leading dissidents in this country today. I spoke to them
yesterday here in Boston in a rare joint interview. Howard Zinn
is one of America’s most widely read historians. His classic
work /A People’s History of the United States/ has sold over a
million and a half copies, and it’s altered how many people
teach the nation’s history. His latest book is /A Power
Governments Cannot Suppress/. Noam Chomsky began teaching
linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in
Cambridge over half a century ago. He is the author of dozens of
books on linguistics and US foreign policy. His most recent book
is called /Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on
Democracy/.
In a wide-ranging interview, we talked about US wars from Iraq
to Vietnam, about resistance and about academia. I asked Noam
Chomsky about political science professor Norman Finkelstein,
one of the country’s foremost critics of Israel policy, and his
battle to receive tenure at DePaul University, where he has
taught for six years. Professor Finkelstein’s tenure has been
approved at the departmental and college level, but the dean of
the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at DePaul has opposed
it. A final decision is expected to be made in May. Finkelstein
has accused Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz of being
responsible for leading the effort to deny him tenure. In an
interview with the /Harvard Crimson/, Dershowitz admitted he had
sent a letter to DePaul faculty members lobbying against
Finkelstein’s tenure. I asked Noam Chomsky about the dispute.
*NOAM CHOMSKY: *The whole thing is outrageous. I mean, he's an
outstanding scholar. He has produced book after book. He's got
recommendations from some of the leading scholars in the many
areas in which he has worked. The faculty -- the departmental
committee unanimously recommended him for tenure. It's amazing
that he hasn't had full professorship a long time ago.
And, as you were saying, there was a huge campaign led by a
Harvard law professor, Alan Dershowitz, to try in a desperate
effort to defame him and vilify him, so as to prevent him from
getting tenure. The details of it are utterly shocking, and, as
you said, it got to the point where the DePaul administration
called on Harvard to put an end to this.
*AMY GOODMAN: *That's very significant, for one university to
call on the leadership of another university to stop one of its
professors.
*NOAM CHOMSKY: *To stop this maniac, yeah. What's behind it?
It’s very simple and straightforward. Norman Finkelstein wrote a
book, which is in fact the best compendium that now exists of
human rights violations in Israel and the blocking of diplomacy
by Israel and the United States, which I mentioned -- very
careful scholarly book, as all of his work is, impeccable --
also about the uses of anti-Semitism to try to silence a
critical discussion.
And the framework of his book was a critique of a book of
apologetics for atrocities and violence by Alan Dershowitz. That
was the framework. So he went through Dershowitz’s shark claims,
showed in great detail that they are completely false and
outrageous, that he's lying about the facts, that he’s an
apologist for violence, that he’s a passionate opponent of civil
liberties -- which he is -- and he documented it in detail.
Dershowitz is intelligent enough to know that he can’t respond,
so he does what any tenth-rate lawyer does when you have a
rotten case: you try to change the subject, maybe by vilifying
opposing counsel. That changes the subject. Now we talk about
whether, you know, opposing counsel did or did not commit this
iniquity. And the tactic is a very good one, because you win,
even if you lose. Suppose your charges against are all refuted.
You’ve still won. You’ve changed the subject. The subject is no
longer the real topic: the crucial facts about Israel,
Dershowitz’s vulgar apologetics for them, which sort of are
reminiscent of the worst days of Stalinism. We’ve forgotten all
of that. We’re now talking about whether Finkelstein did this,
that and the other thing. And even if the charges are false, the
topic's been changed. That's the basis of it.
Dershowitz has been desperate to prevent this book from being --
first of all, he tried to stop it from being published, in an
outlandish effort, which I’ve never seen anything like it,
hiring a major law firm to threaten libel suits, writing to the
governor of California -- it was published by the University of
California Press. When he couldn't stop the publication, he
launched a jihad against Norman Finkelstein, simply to try to
vilify and defame him, in the hope that maybe what he’s writing
will disappear. That’s the background.
It’s not, incidentally, the first time. I mean, actually, I
happen to be very high on Dershowitz's hit list, hate list. And
he has also produced outlandish lies about me for years: you
know, I told him I was an agnostic about the Holocaust and I
wouldn't tell him the time of day, you know, and so on and so
forth.
*AMY GOODMAN: *You mean that he made that charge against you?
*NOAM CHOMSKY: *Of course, and on and on. I won’t even talk
about it. What's the reason? It's in print. In fact, you can
look at it in the internet. In 1973, I guess it was, the leading
Israeli human rights activist, Israel Shahak, who incidentally
is a survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto and Bergen-Belsen and headed
a small human rights group in Israel, which was the only real
one at the time, came to Boston, had an interview with the
/Boston Globe/, in which he identified himself correctly as the
chair of the Israeli League of Human Rights. Dershowitz wrote a
vitriolic letter to the /Globe/, condemning him, claiming he’s
lying about Israel, he’s even lying about being the chair, he
was voted out by the membership.
I knew the facts. In fact, he's an old friend, Shahak. So I
wrote a letter to the /Globe/, explaining it wasn't true. In
fact, the government did try to get rid of him. They called on
their membership to flood the meeting of this small human rights
group and vote him out. But they brought it to the courts, and
the courts said, yeah, we’d like to get rid of this human rights
group, but find a way to do it that's not so blatantly illegal.
So I sort of wrote that.
But Dershowitz thought he could brazen it out -- you know,
Harvard law professor -- so he wrote another letter saying
Shahak's lying, I’m lying, and he challenged me to quote from
this early court decision. It never occurred to him for a minute
that I’d actually have the transcript. But I did. So I wrote
another letter in which I quoted from the court decision,
demonstrating that -- as polite, but that Dershowitz is a liar,
he’s even falsifying Israeli court decisions, he's a supporter
of atrocities, and he even is a passionate opponent of civil
rights. And this is like the Russian government destroying an
Amnesty International chapter by flooding it with Communist
Party members to vote out the membership.
Well, he went berserk, and ever since then I have been one of
his targets. In fact, anyone who exposes him as what he is is
going to be subjected to this technique, because he knows he
can't respond, so must return to vilification.
And in the case of Norman Finkelstein, he sort of went off into
outer space. But it's an outrageous case. And the fact that it’s
even being debated is outrageous. Just read his letters of
recommendation from literally the leading figures in the many
fields in which he works, most respected people.
*AMY GOODMAN: *Most interesting, the letters of support from the
leading Holocaust scholars like Raul Hilberg.
*NOAM CHOMSKY: *Raul Hilberg is the founder of Holocaust
studies, you know, the most distinguished figure in the field.
In fact, he says Norman didn't go far enough. And it's the same
-- Avi Shlaim is one of the -- maybe the leading Israeli
historian, has strongly supported him, and the same with others.
I can't refer to the private correspondence, but it's very
strong letters from leading figures in these fields. And it's
not surprising that the faculty committee unanimously supported
him. I mean, there was, in fact -- they did -- the faculty
committee did, in fact, run through in detail the deluge of
vilification from Dershowitz and went through it point by point
and essentially dismissed it as frivolous.
*AMY GOODMAN: *They rejected a 12,000-word attack, point by point.
*NOAM CHOMSKY: *Aside from saying that the very idea of sending
it is outrageous. You don’t do that in tenure cases.
*AMY GOODMAN: *So, how do you think it will turn out?
*NOAM CHOMSKY: *Well, the usual story: this depends on public
reaction.
*AMY GOODMAN: *Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn. We'll come back to
them in a minute.
[break]
*AMY GOODMAN: *We return to my interview with Noam Chomsky and
Howard Zinn, who joined me in the studio here yesterday. We
continued to look at the issues of academia in a time of war, so
I asked Howard Zinn about his experience at Spelman College, the
historically black college for women in Atlanta. Professor Zinn
taught at Spelman for seven years before eventually being fired
for insubordination. I asked him why he was pushed out.
*HOWARD ZINN: *I had supported the students, and this was the
Civil Rights Movement, right? My students are black women who
get involved in the Civil Rights Movement. I support them. The
administration is nervous about that, but they can't really say
anything publicly, or do anything, because this is the first
black president of Spelman College. They have all been white
missionaries before that. And so, he doesn't want to do anything
then. But when the students come back from -- you might say,
“come back from jail” onto the campus and rebel against --
*AMY GOODMAN: *What year was this?
*HOWARD ZINN: *This was 1963. And the students rebel against the
conditions that they're living in, very paternalistic, very
controlling, and I support them in that, then that's too much
for the president, and so, although I have tenure and I’m a full
professor and I’m chair of the department, I get a letter saying
goodbye.
And so, that was my -- you know, what Noam was talking about
when you ask him what's going to happen, universities, colleges
are not democratic institutions. Really, they’re like
corporations. The people who have the most power are the people
who have the least to do with education. That is, they're not
the faculty, they're not the students, they're not even the
people who keep the university going -- the buildings and
grounds people and the technical people and the secretaries --
no. They're the trustees, the businesspeople, the people with
connections, and they're the ones who have the most power,
they're the ones who make the decisions. And so, that's why I
was fired from there, and that's why I was almost fired by John
Silber at Boston University, but there was a --
*AMY GOODMAN: *Over what?
*HOWARD ZINN: *Over a strike. We had a faculty strike. We had a
secretary strike. We had a buildings and ground workers strike.
We had almost a general strike, almost an IWW strike at Boston
University in 1977. And when the faculty had actually won, got a
contract and went back to work, some of us on the faculty said
we shouldn't go back to work while the secretaries are still on
strike. We wouldn't cross their picket lines. We held our
classes out on the streets rather than do that. And so, five of
us were threatened with firing.
But there was a great clamor among students and faculty and
actually across the country. They even got telegrams from
France, protesting against this. And so, one of the rare
occasions in which the administration, with all its power,
backed down. And so, I barely held onto my job.
*AMY GOODMAN: *You begin your book with two quotes. One of
Eugene V. Debs: “While there is a lower class, I am in it; and
while there is a criminal element, I am of it; and while there
is a soul in prison, I am not free.” And Henry David Thoreau:
“When the subject has refused allegiance and the officer has
resigned his office, then the revolution is accomplished.” You
also write more about Henry David Thoreau. You write about him
going to jail.
*HOWARD ZINN: *Yeah, well, Thoreau is worth reading today and
remembering today, because Thoreau committed just a small act of
civil disobedience against the Mexican War. I mean, the Mexican
War had some of the same characteristics as the war in Iraq
today, and that is that the American people were lied to about
the reasons for going into Mexico, and they weren't told that
the real reason for going into Mexico was that we wanted Mexican
land, which we took at the end of the Mexican War, just as today
we're not being told that the real reason for being in Iraq has
to do with oil and profits and money. And so, the situation in
the Mexican War, against which Thoreau objected, was in many
ways, you know, similar.
And Thoreau saw that, and he saw that American boys were dying
on the road to Mexico City and we were killing a lot of innocent
Mexican people, and so he decided not to pay his taxes and spent
just a very short time in jail, but then came out, delivered a
lecture on civil disobedience and wrote an essay on the right to
disobey the government when the government violates what it's
supposed to do, violates the rights of Americans, violates the
rights of other people.
And so, that stands as a classic statement for Americans, that
it's honorable and right to not to pay your taxes or to refuse
military service or to disobey your government when you believe
that your government is wrong. And so, the hope is that today
more soldiers who are asked to go to Iraq, more young people who
are asked to enlist in the war against Iraq, will read Thoreau's
essay on civil disobedience, will take its advice to heart,
realize that the government is not holy, that what's holy is
human life and human freedom and the right of people to resist
authority. And so, Thoreau has great lessons for us today.
*AMY GOODMAN: *Noam Chomsky, as we wrap up, that whole issue of
hope and where you see things going in the current Bush
administration, what it stands for, and the level of protest in
this country. Do you think that level of protest will succeed?
*NOAM CHOMSKY: *It depends what you mean by “succeed.” I mean, I
have a slightly more hopeful sense than Howard, at least
expressed. I suspect he agrees. It's true that the country, that
in terms of the institutional structure -- government for the
wealthy and so on -- there hasn’t been much change in 200 years.
But there's been enormous progress, I mean, even in the last
forty years, since the ’60s. Many rights have been won: rights
for minorities, rights for women, rights of future generations,
which is what the environmental movement is about. Opposition to
aggression has increased. The first solidarity movements in
history began in the 1980s, after centuries of European
imperialism, and no one ever thought of going to live in an
Algerian village to protect the people from French violence, or
in a Vietnamese village. Thousands of Americans were doing that
in the 1980s in Reagan’s terrorist wars. It’s now extended over
the whole world. There’s an international solidarity movement.
The global justice movements, which meet annually in the World
Social Forum, are a completely new phenomenon. It’s true
globalization among people, maybe the seeds of the first true
international -- people from all over the world, all walks of
life, many ideas which are right on people's minds and agenda,
in fact, being implemented about a participatory society, the
kind of work that Mike Albert’s been doing. These are all new
things. I mean, nothing is ever totally new. There are bits and
pieces of them in the past, but the changes are enormous.
And the same with opposition to aggression. I mean, after all,
the Iraq war is the first war in hundreds of years of Western
history, at least the first one I can think of, which was
massively protested before it was officially launched. And it
actually was underway, we have since learned, but it wasn’t
officially underway. But it was huge, millions of people
protesting it all over the world, so much so that The /New York
Times/ lamented that there's a second superpower: the
population. Well, you know, that's significant and, I think,
gives good reason for hope.
There are periods of regression. We're now in a period of
regression, but if you look at the cycle over time, it's
upwards. And there's no limits that it can't reach.
*AMY GOODMAN: *Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn, two of this
country's leading dissidents. We spoke yesterday on Patriot's
Day, which is observed here in Massachusetts -- also, I believe,
in Maine.
